Trinidad and Tobago Music Company
The Trinidad and Tobago Music Company Limited was established in 2014. As a subsidiary of Trinidad and Tobago Creative Industries Company Limited, MusicTT’s mandate is "to stimulate and facilitate the business development and export activity of the music industry in Trinidad and Tobago to generate national wealth." As such, MusicTT provides industry-wide strategic and action plans toward the development of the music industry as well as guidance and access to music education and capacity development. The government has identified the music industry as one of three pioneering sectors that are pivotal to long-term economic sustainability because of dropping prices of oil and gas and Tobago's main export; the other two sectors identified for development are film. To permanently implant T&T’s musical talents in international circles, MusicTT has established an online music showcase featuring local artists; this showcase exposes the world to Trinbagonian musical creativity. MusicTT hosted a music symposium titled FEEL THE BEAT featuring multi-platinum recording producer Salaam Remi.
This symposium provided participants with information on music production at both local and international levels and exploiting opportunities in the music business ecosystem to better equip individuals aspiring to make music and/or its derivative industries a full-time lucrative career. This symposium took place on Thursday Central Bank Auditorium, Port of Spain. Live music is a fundamental pillar of the global music industry. Locally, as per MusicTT’s survey results in 2017, access to music performance spaces was seen to be a major issue for music creatives, most of whom work a fulltime job parallel to their musical activities. Additionally, there has been a challenge for local music performers outside of the indigenous carnival-oriented genres to book performances year-round. Internationally, the designation of creative and entertainment districts attracts visitors and therefore creates opportunities for jobs and revenue generation, it promotes and assists in policing and regulating an area with a high concentration of businesses and activity from a particular sector.
As such, the creation of a Live Music District is a key strategy being undertaken by MusicTT through the Ministry of Trade and Industry in order to address the challenges presented by the majority of stakeholders. MusicTT has identified the City of Port of Spain as the first Live Music District for Trinidad & Tobago; the main areas within the City that were targeted included the heart of Port of Spain, The Botanic Gardens, Ariapita Avenue, as well as the surrounding hotels, restaurants and other bustling areas. These areas were chosen due to the already-present infrastructure suited for live music as well as the existence of a solid customer base who frequent these areas; the Live Music District was launched in March 2018 and has since provided local artistes with opportunities to showcase their talent at various events and locations throughout the chosen Pilot in the Port of Spain district. Registered artistes have performed in venues such as Radisson Hotel, Hilton Hotel and Bunty, Kaiso Blues Café, Xperience Event Centre, D’Bocas and the Rizzoni’s to name a few, as well as signature events such as Live at the Gardens and Live on the Avenue.
Phase 2 will commence on Sunday 21st October 2018 with Live at Fiesta Plaza and continue until December 2018. As an export initiative, the APDP focuses on those artists who are evaluated to be on the cusp of export-readiness but need specific capacity development in areas such as music business and entertainment law training and artist development, pitching strategies, developing business and marketing plans, developing robust online presence, monetizing music IP, etc. All training will be done through the Music Export Academy; this is a yearly initiative, with cohorts for each year being transparently chosen by international, independent industry executives at a public music showcase. The Music Showcase is the first phase of the Artist Portfolio Development Programme. Local singers/songwriters and bands of all genres performed before a live audience and a panel of international, independent industry executives for a chance to become part of the cohort for the Music Export Academy; the event took place on Saturday 9 December at Ariapita Avenue.
As a part of the Artist Portfolio Development Programme, this Academy will train the cohort in the exact knowledge and skills they need to export their music products. This may include training and workshops as per the needs of the participants; some of the wider sessions will be open to other suitable music creatives. The 11 artists advancing from the Showcase to become the first Music Export Academy cohort are Chinaka, Shannon Francois, Candice Caton, Miss Renuka, Daniel Griffith, DEZii, X-A-Vier & Black Unity, Donald Job, Quattro Musica, VoiceQueen and Keoné. MusicTT’s Song Writing and Production Workshop gave Trinidad and Tobago’s creative practitioners access to international markets and the opportunity to build capacity to an international standard. Participants obtained knowledge of international best practices in an interactive, hands-on workshop while familiarizing international music industry professionals with up and coming Trinidad and Tobago artistes and producers. Entertainment Management Quarters Limited led by their CEO Mr. Simon Baptiste was awarded the tender for the Provision of the Design and Delivery of an Advanced Song Writing and Production Camp.
They contracted Grammy-nominated team Weirdo Workshop, inclusive of CEO/songwriter/vocalist Claude Kelly, co-CEO/producer/musician Chuck Harmony as well as their so
Piarco International Airport
Piarco International Airport, shortened to Piarco International, Piarco Airport, or Piarco, is an international airport serving the island of Trinidad and is one of two international airports in Trinidad and Tobago. The airport is located 30 km east of Downtown Port of Spain, located in the adjacent town of Piarco, it is the seventh busiest airport in the Caribbean in terms of passengers served and third busiest in the English-speaking Caribbean, after Sangster International Airport and Lynden Pindling International Airport. The airport is the primary hub and operating base for the country's national airline, as well as the Caribbean's largest airline, Caribbean Airlines. Piarco International Airport has direct scheduled service to destinations in the United States, Central America, South America and Europe, it is a significant transit hub for the Southern Caribbean and serves as the primary connection point for many passengers travelling from Guyana. Piarco Airport opened on 8 January 1931.
Before this, the Queen's Park Savannah, the Mucarapo Field, the Cocorite Docks were used as airstrips to serve the island. In World War II the original airfield was used to house the Royal Navy Observer School HMS Goshawk. From 1942 it was used by both the United States Army Air Forces Sixth Air Force and United States Navy air squadrons; the airport was used both as a transport airfield and for antisubmarine patrol flights over the south Caribbean. It was returned to civil control after the war. In World War II the United States Army Air Forces Sixth Air Force stationed the following units at the airport performing antisubmarine patrols: 1st Bombardment Squadron 24 April – 29 October 1941 10th Bombardment Squadron 27 August – 12 October 1943 35th Bombardment Squadron 27 August – 12 October 1943 A major expansion of the airport, which included the construction of a new terminal building, high-speed taxiways, was completed in 2001; the old airport building is used for cargo handling. Piarco International Airport is the primary hub and operating base of Caribbean Airlines and was the primary hub and operating base of the now defunct BWIA West Indies Airways and Air Caribbean.
Briko Air Services And Aerial World Services operate a flight school at the airport. In 2006 the Airports Authority of Trinidad And Tobago commissioned a study for land use planning and urban development planning. All-Inclusive Project Development Services Limited was commissioned to conduct the study; the study was approved by the Board. In 2011, work on the infrastructure of the North Aviation Business Park began, it is completed in 2013. At Piarco International Airport there are three connector taxiways; this technologically state of the art airport has 82 ticket counter positions that operate under SITA's fibre-optic C. U. T. E. System which exceeds the recommended standards of ICAO and IATA, it has a Flight Information Display System, which serves all airport users and a Baggage Information Display System. The terminal is a air-conditioned, smoke-free building, equipped to handle peak-hour passenger traffic of 1,500 processing passengers through a computerised immigration system; the Customs Hall has four baggage/cargo carousels.
An administrative/operations building for the Trinidad and Tobago Air Guard is being constructed at the Piarco Air Base. A military airfield will be constructed near the air base; the control tower at the old terminal building is used for air traffic control. The tower at the new terminal building is used for runway movement control. A new nine-story control tower was opened in 2011; the new North Terminal consists of 35,964 m2 of building with 14 second-level aircraft gates for international flights and 2 ground-level domestic gates. The overall layout of the building consists of three main elements: a landside core structure, a single-level duty-free shopping mall, a 2-level'Y' shaped concourse. 100-foot cathedral ceilings and glass walls provide passengers and other visitors to the North Terminal with a sense of open space and magnificent views of the Piarco savannah and the nearby Northern Range mountains. The public atrium has the largest glass dome in the Caribbean; the airport is large enough to accommodate most international widebody airliners including the Boeing 747, Airbus A330-300, Boeing 777, Boeing 767 and the Airbus A340.
Piarco International is capable of medium-sized aircraft including the Boeing 737, Boeing 757, Airbus A320, Embraer 190 as well as small aircraft such as the DeHavilland Dash 8, ATR 72 and other such turboprop aircraft. The airport layout consists of one main terminal building; these concourses are not identified as their name depicts but are divided into the following areas. The Air Guard of Trinidad and Tobago is based at Piarco International Airport. During the existence of BWIA West Indies, its head office was on the airport property; the disused south terminal has been renovated into a VIP terminal for the Summit of The Americas. The North terminal has received additional remote parking stands. In November 2009, upgrades on the south terminal were completed and the area now serves as a private/executive jet facility for high-end travellers; the Airport underwent expansion and renovation works in preparation for the Commonwealth He
Citrus
Citrus is a genus of flowering trees and shrubs in the rue family, Rutaceae. Plants in the genus produce citrus fruits, including important crops such as oranges, grapefruits and limes; the most recent research indicates an origin of the genus in the Himalayas. Previous research indicated an origin in the part of Southeast Asia bordered by Northeast India and the Yunnan province of China, it is in this region that some commercial species such as oranges and lemons originated. Citrus fruit has been cultivated in an ever-widening area since ancient times. Citrus plants are native to subtropical and tropical regions of Asia, Island Southeast Asia, Near Oceania, they were first domesticated in these areas. A genomic and biogeographical analysis by Wu et al. have shown that the center of origin of the genus Citrus is the southeast foothills of the Himalayas, in a region stretching from eastern Assam, northern Myanmar, to western Yunnan. It diverged from a common ancestor with Poncirus trifoliata. A change in climate conditions during the Late Miocene resulted in a sudden speciation event.
The species resulting from this event include the citrons of South Asia. This was followed by the spread of citrus species into Taiwan and Japan in the Early Pliocene, resulting in the tachibana orange; the earliest introductions of citrus species by human migrations was during the Austronesian expansion, where Citrus hystrix, Citrus macroptera, Citrus maxima were among the canoe plants carried by Austronesian voyagers eastwards into Micronesia and Polynesia. The citron was introduced early into the Mediterranean basin from India and Southeast Asia, it was introduced via two ancient trade routes: an overland route through Persia, the Levant and the Mediterranean islands. Although the exact date of the original introduction is unknown due to the sparseness of archaeobotanical remains, the earliest evidence are seeds recovered from the Hala Sultan Tekke site of Cyprus, dated to around 1200 BCE. Other archaeobotanical evidence include pollen from Carthage dating back to the 4th century BCE; the earliest complete description of the citron was first attested from Theophrastus, c. 310 BCE.
Lemons and sour oranges are believed to have been introduced to the Mediterranean by Arab traders at around the 10th century. Mandarins were not introduced until the 19th century; this group of species has reached great importance in some of the Mediterranean countries, in the case of orange and lemon trees, they found here soil and climatic conditions which allow them to achieve a high level of fruit quality better than in the regions from where they came. The "native" oranges of Florida originated with the Spanish conquistadores; the agronomists of classical Rome made many references to the cultivation of citrus fruits within the limits of their empire. King Louis XIV of France housed citrus in orangeries, to protect the tropical fruit to be grown in the 1600s France; the generic name originated from Latin, where it referred to either the plant now known as citron or a conifer tree. It is somehow related to the ancient Greek word for cedar, κέδρος; this may be due to perceived similarities in the smell of citrus leaves and fruit with that of cedar.
Collectively, Citrus fruits and plants are known by the Romance loanword agrumes. The large citrus fruit of today evolved from small, edible berries over millions of years. Citrus plants diverged from a common ancestor about 15 million years ago, about when it diverged from the related severinia, for example the Chinese box orange. About 7 million years ago, citrus plants diverged into two groups, the main citrus genus and the ancestors of the trifoliate orange, enough related that it can still be hybridized with all other citrus; these estimates are made using genetic mapping of plant chloroplasts. A DNA study published in Nature in 2018 concludes that citrus trees originated in the foothills of the Himalayas, in the area of Assam, western Yunnan, northern Myanmar; the three ancestral species in the genus Citrus associated with modern Citrus cultivars are the mandarin orange and citron. All of the common commercially important citrus fruits are hybrids involving these three species with each other, their main progenies, other wild Citrus species within the last few thousand years.
A fossil leaf from the Pliocene of Valdarno is described as †Citrus meletensis In China, fossil leaf specimens of †Citrus linczangensis have been collected from coal-bearing strata of the Bangmai Formation in the Bangmai village, about 10 km northwest of Lincang City, Yunnan. The Bangmai Formation contains abun
United States dollar
The United States dollar is the official currency of the United States and its territories per the United States Constitution since 1792. In practice, the dollar is divided into 100 smaller cent units, but is divided into 1000 mills for accounting; the circulating paper money consists of Federal Reserve Notes that are denominated in United States dollars. Since the suspension in 1971 of convertibility of paper U. S. currency into any precious metal, the U. S. dollar is, de facto, fiat money. As it is the most used in international transactions, the U. S. dollar is the world's primary reserve currency. Several countries use it as their official currency, in many others it is the de facto currency. Besides the United States, it is used as the sole currency in two British Overseas Territories in the Caribbean: the British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos Islands. A few countries use the Federal Reserve Notes for paper money, while still minting their own coins, or accept U. S. dollar coins. As of June 27, 2018, there are $1.67 trillion in circulation, of which $1.62 trillion is in Federal Reserve notes.
Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution provides that the Congress has the power "To coin money". Laws implementing this power are codified at 31 U. S. C. § 5112. Section 5112 prescribes the forms; these coins are both designated in Section 5112 as "legal tender" in payment of debts. The Sacagawea dollar is one example of the copper alloy dollar; the pure silver dollar is known as the American Silver Eagle. Section 5112 provides for the minting and issuance of other coins, which have values ranging from one cent to 100 dollars; these other coins are more described in Coins of the United States dollar. The Constitution provides that "a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time"; that provision of the Constitution is made specific by Section 331 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The sums of money reported in the "Statements" are being expressed in U. S. dollars. The U. S. dollar may therefore be described as the unit of account of the United States.
The word "dollar" is one of the words in the first paragraph of Section 9 of Article I of the Constitution. There, "dollars" is a reference to the Spanish milled dollar, a coin that had a monetary value of 8 Spanish units of currency, or reales. In 1792 the U. S. Congress passed a Coinage Act. Section 9 of that act authorized the production of various coins, including "DOLLARS OR UNITS—each to be of the value of a Spanish milled dollar as the same is now current, to contain three hundred and seventy-one grains and four sixteenth parts of a grain of pure, or four hundred and sixteen grains of standard silver". Section 20 of the act provided, "That the money of account of the United States shall be expressed in dollars, or units... and that all accounts in the public offices and all proceedings in the courts of the United States shall be kept and had in conformity to this regulation". In other words, this act designated the United States dollar as the unit of currency of the United States. Unlike the Spanish milled dollar, the U.
S. dollar is based upon a decimal system of values. In addition to the dollar the coinage act established monetary units of mill or one-thousandth of a dollar, cent or one-hundredth of a dollar, dime or one-tenth of a dollar, eagle or ten dollars, with prescribed weights and composition of gold, silver, or copper for each, it was proposed in the mid-1800s that one hundred dollars be known as a union, but no union coins were struck and only patterns for the $50 half union exist. However, only cents are in everyday use as divisions of the dollar. XX9 per gallon, e.g. $3.599, more written as $3.599⁄10. When issued in circulating form, denominations equal to or less than a dollar are emitted as U. S. coins while denominations equal to or greater than a dollar are emitted as Federal Reserve notes. Both one-dollar coins and notes are produced today, although the note form is more common. In the past, "paper money" was issued in denominations less than a dollar and gold coins were issued for circulation up to the value of $20.
The term eagle was used in the Coinage Act of 1792 for the denomination of ten dollars, subsequently was used in naming gold coins. Paper currency less than one dollar in denomination, known as "fractional currency", was sometimes pejoratively referred to as "shinplasters". In 1854, James Guthrie Secretary of the Treasury, proposed creating $100, $50 and $25 gold coins, which were referred to as a "Union", "Half Union", "Quarter Union", thus implying a denomination of 1 Union = $100. Today, USD notes are made from cotton fiber paper, unlike most common paper, made of wood fiber. U. S. coins are produced by the United States Mint. U. S. dollar banknotes are printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing and, since 1914, have been issued by t
Argentina
Argentina the Argentine Republic, is a country located in the southern half of South America. Sharing the bulk of the Southern Cone with Chile to the west, the country is bordered by Bolivia and Paraguay to the north, Brazil to the northeast and the South Atlantic Ocean to the east, the Drake Passage to the south. With a mainland area of 2,780,400 km2, Argentina is the eighth-largest country in the world, the fourth largest in the Americas, the largest Spanish-speaking nation; the sovereign state is subdivided into twenty-three provinces and one autonomous city, Buenos Aires, the federal capital of the nation as decided by Congress. The provinces and the capital exist under a federal system. Argentina claims sovereignty over part of Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; the earliest recorded human presence in modern-day Argentina dates back to the Paleolithic period. The Inca Empire expanded to the northwest of the country in Pre-Columbian times; the country has its roots in Spanish colonization of the region during the 16th century.
Argentina rose as the successor state of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata, a Spanish overseas viceroyalty founded in 1776. The declaration and fight for independence was followed by an extended civil war that lasted until 1861, culminating in the country's reorganization as a federation of provinces with Buenos Aires as its capital city; the country thereafter enjoyed relative peace and stability, with several waves of European immigration radically reshaping its cultural and demographic outlook. The almost-unparalleled increase in prosperity led to Argentina becoming the seventh wealthiest nation in the world by the early 20th century. Following the Great Depression in the 1930s, Argentina descended into political instability and economic decline that pushed it back into underdevelopment, though it remained among the fifteen richest countries for several decades. Following the death of President Juan Perón in 1974, his widow, Isabel Martínez de Perón, ascended to the presidency, she was overthrown in 1976 by a U.
S.-backed coup which installed a right-wing military dictatorship. The military government persecuted and murdered numerous political critics and leftists in the Dirty War, a period of state terrorism that lasted until the election of Raúl Alfonsín as President in 1983. Several of the junta's leaders were convicted of their crimes and sentenced to imprisonment. Argentina is a prominent regional power in the Southern Cone and Latin America, retains its historic status as a middle power in international affairs. Argentina has the second largest economy in South America, the third-largest in Latin America, membership in the G-15 and G-20 major economies, it is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, World Trade Organization, Union of South American Nations, Community of Latin American and Caribbean States and the Organization of Ibero-American States. Despite its history of economic instability, it ranks second highest in the Human Development Index in Latin America; the description of the country by the word Argentina has been found on a Venetian map in 1536.
In English the name "Argentina" comes from the Spanish language, however the naming itself is not Spanish, but Italian. Argentina means in Italian " of silver, silver coloured" borrowed from the Old French adjective argentine " of silver" > "silver coloured" mentioned in the 12th century. The French word argentine is the feminine form of argentin and derives from argent "silver" with the suffix -in; the Italian naming "Argentina" for the country implies Terra Argentina "land of silver" or Costa Argentina "coast of silver". In Italian, the adjective or the proper noun is used in an autonomous way as a substantive and replaces it and it is said l'Argentina; the name Argentina was first given by the Venetian and Genoese navigators, such as Giovanni Caboto. In Spanish and Portuguese, the words for "silver" are plata and prata and " of silver" is said plateado and prateado. Argentina was first associated with the silver mountains legend, widespread among the first European explorers of the La Plata Basin.
The first written use of the name in Spanish can be traced to La Argentina, a 1602 poem by Martín del Barco Centenera describing the region. Although "Argentina" was in common usage by the 18th century, the country was formally named "Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata" by the Spanish Empire, "United Provinces of the Río de la Plata" after independence; the 1826 constitution included the first use of the name "Argentine Republic" in legal documents. The name "Argentine Confederation" was commonly used and was formalized in the Argentine Constitution of 1853. In 1860 a presidential decree settled the country's name as "Argentine Republic", that year's constitutional amendment ruled all the names since 1810 as valid. In the English language the country was traditionally called "the Argentine", mimicking the typical Spanish usage la Argentina and resulting from a mistaken shortening of the fuller name'Argentine Republic'.'The Argentine' fell out of fashion during the mid-to-late 20th century, now the country is referred to as "Argentina".
In the Spanish language "Argentina" is feminine, taking the feminine article "La" as the i
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange
The Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange is the main stock exchange in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, the largest stock exchange in the Caribbean region by market capitalization. As a member-state of CARICOM several companies from Barbados, the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Securities Exchange and the Eastern Caribbean Securities Exchange cross-list their stocks onto the Trinidad and Tobago Stock Exchange; the Securities Market which informally existed in Trinidad & Tobago for well over twenty years prior to the opening of the Trinidad & Tobago Stock Exchange achieved significance in the early 1970s when Government decided as a matter of policy to localise the foreign owned commercial banking and manufacturing sectors of the economy. The thrust of the policy was to get such companies to divest and sell a majority of their shares to nationals. Two bodies chosen to effect this policy were the Capital Issues Committee, set up by the Ministry of Finance in July 1970 to direct developments in the primary market and the Call Exchange, established under the umbrella of the Central Bank in August 1965 to monitor activities in the secondary market.
Parallel to this development in the public sector in the early 1970s was the rapid establishment of private institutions such as trust companies and stock broking firms to satisfy the demands of investors in both the primary and secondary markets. With such infrastructure in place and the concomitant increase in the securities business the decision was taken to establish a securities market within a framework of established Rules and Regulations to facilitate the development of the domestic capital market; the establishment of the Stock Exchange under the provisions of the Securities Industry Act 1981 was a natural extension of the policy to formalise the securities market in Trinidad and Tobago. This Act was proclaimed on 23 October 1981 and the Stock Exchange was formally opened on 26 October 1981 under the auspices of the Ministry of Finance. Over the years and leading up to the current time, there was no doubt that the original Securities Law, that is, The Securities Industry Act, 1981 became ineffective.
In attempting to bring both Primary and Secondary market activity under one umbrella, the Act created confusion, for the most part the provisions were unenforceable. This was because the Exchange as a regulatory Organisation, had no discretion to reasonably moderate the strict and unreasonable application of the letter of the Act once a particular provision was not explicitly stated in the Act; the Ministry of Finance, in recognizing this problem, worked with the Exchange to introduce a more dynamic piece of legislation. As a remedial measure, the Government, through the Ministry of Finance, passed legislation repealing the 1981 Act and replacing it with the Securities Industry Act of 1995 which brought into operation the establishment of a Securities and Exchange Commission; the 1995 Act vests with the Commission, the authority to maintain surveillance over the securities market and ensure orderly and equitable dealings in securities. Furthermore, all market actors, meaning issuers, investment advisers and dealers, etc. must register with the Commission, who will be responsible for controlling and supervising their activities.
The Exchange on the other hand will regulate trading on the secondary market, as well as the activities of the Members of the Exchange, subject of course to the oversight by the Commission. On December 31, 2012 the Securities Industry Act of 1995 was repealed and replaced by the Securities Act, 2012; the TTSE has experienced some slowdown, both in terms of activity and listings, within the last decade, stemming from legislation which restricted institutions from holding more than 10% of their portfolio in any single company's shares. The Global Recession has contributed to a depressed state of liquidity and pricing on the TTSE; this was further compounded by the slowdown in the Trinidad and Tobago economy stemming from depressed commodity prices from 2014 onwards. Despite this, there has been a number of large cap listings, including the listings of First Citizen's Bank and the Trinidad and Tobago Natural Gas Company Limited; as of August 2018 the TTSE Market Capitalization was estimated at TT$120 billion, with conglomerates and financial institutions accounting for the vast majority of value.
The companies with the greatest capitalisation on the exchange are Republic Bank and First Caribbean International Bank. Significant capitalisation is represented in West Indian Tobacco, Scotiabank Trinidad and Tobago, National Enterprises Limited, ANSA McAL, First Citizen's Bank, National Commercial Bank of Jamaica Limited and Tobago Natural Gas Company Limited and Massy Holdings. Clico Investment Fund, listed on the Mutual Fund Market, is a company vested with the shares of Republic Bank Limited which were held by the now collapsed CL Financial; the security consists of those shares as well as Government of Tobago Bonds. The company was listed in January 2013 and is a closed end mutual fund with a lifespan of 20 years; the energy sector of Trinidad and Tobago, the main driver of the economy and the major source of revenue for the country, is poorly represented on the TTSE, with only the minor oil company, Moraven Holdings and National Enterprises offering any access to the local energy market.
The listing of TTNGL provided some opportunity to buy into the local energy market but significant companies such as Petroleum Company of Trinidad and Tobago and National Petro
United States 37% 
Brazil 8.2% 
Argentina 8.0% 
Chile 7.2% 
Peru 4.5% (2015 est.)[4]
China 8.2% 
Singapore 4.6% 
